Pakistan’s worsening sectarian conflict claimed at least another 47 lives last night after a large car bomb was detonated as Shia Muslims left a mosque in Karachi.

Women and children were among those killed and wounded, many trapped under rubble. Local residents pulled survivors from the debris themselves as rescue equipment was unable to reach the site of the blast, in a narrow gap between two partially collapsed buildings, witnesses said.

The attack, in Abbas Town, a Shia district of the country’s commercial capital, follows two similar attacks on the minority community in Quetta in January in which almost 200